'_Baby!_' said Dot. She gathered it up in her little shaking arms, she put her poor white face down upon it, and broke into such pitiful tears and sobs that it wept too. Larrie took them both into his arms, and sat down on a fallen tree. He soothed them, he called them a thousand tender, beautiful names; he took off Dot's hat and stroked her little curls, he kissed his baby again and again; he kissed his wife. When they were all quite calm and the bullocks ten miles away, they started again. 'I'll carry him,' said Larrie. 'Ah no, let me,' Dot said. 'Darling, you're too tired--see, you can hold his hand across my shoulder.' 'No, no, give him to me--my arms ache without him.' 'But the hill--my big baby!' 'Oh, I _must_ have him--Larrie, _let_ me--see, he is so light--why, he is nothing to carry.' CHAPTER II THE RED ROAD COUNTRY In cool weather the Red Road was very pleasant walking. It wound up hill and down dale for many a mile till it reached Hornsby, and branched away into different country. All the way there were gum trees--gum trees and fences; here and there were closer palings and garden shrubs indicating human residence, but they were far apart and the road was very lonely. Parallel to it and showing in places between the trees was the single line of the railway. It did not spoil the scenery at all, it rather gave a friendly look to it and reminded the pedestrian that in spite of the bush silences, the towering trees, the vista of blue hills and the mountain-like freshness of the air, he could be in all the bustle and happy fellowship of town in half-an-hour. Away to the left the ground dipped, then rose again, in a blue soft hill, dipped again, and the new rise was purple and beautiful. The third dip, just a line, white sometimes and again blue was the harbour. On clear days one could see the smoke of vessels. Beyond the hills and the water-line stretched Sydney city, white and shining in the distant sunlight. Further away, over near the sky, the grey blue hills and the light that meant sand-stretches was Botany. Higher up, and between the first and second hill-rise, ran the river they call Lane Cove. A great white building, St Ignatius, made one land-mark and the Mortlake gas-works another; from those places the residents knew their geography. That was Eastwood away over there, nestling among hills; those blurred cottages indicated Ryde; just where the tree tops showed in a hollow, was the head of the river, and right away on the west horizon a certain patch was the highest place in the blue mountains. In a few years the beautiful country-side will be commonplace suburbs; there will be stucco villas and terrace houses, shops and paved roads; the railway has broken its fastness and the change is inevitable.